Meat processing operations often produce, as a by-product, bones having small amounts of meat attached. While the amount of meat attached to any individual bone may be relatively small, in large meat processing operations the overall amount of meat that remains attached to the bones can be significant. Accordingly, it is desirable to recover this meat.
The process of reclaiming meat attached to leftover bones is generally referred to as mechanical separation, and the resulting product is generally described as mechanically separated meat. One concern associated with mechanically separated meat is that the separation process can shear off small pieces of bone. Even if there are no bone fragments large enough to pose a direct safety risk, incorporation of significant amounts of bone matter into the mechanically separated meat can result in unacceptably high levels of certain chemicals contained in the bones, such as calcium.
In addition, mechanically separated meat resulting from a mechanical separation process can be of various levels of quality. Generally, the meat resulting from mechanical separation is ground meat, and more coarsely ground meat is considered to be more valuable than more finely ground meat.